School Vision and Aims

When you step inside our school, you will find an exciting environment of creativity and discovery, where children’s natural curiosity is stimulated and their capacity to learn is nurtured. We are very proud of our ethos, which provides a supportive, family atmosphere with an emphasis on ensuring that our children are happy and confident individuals who love coming to school.

At Godinton Primary School, our team works hard to provide every child with a well-rounded education, enabling them to reach their full potential and succeed wherever their strengths and skills may lie. We strive for academic excellence in our pupils but believe that this should be delivered alongside an enriching and creative curriculum.

Developing a Love of Learning

Our excellent team of teachers and teaching assistants provide the children with a wonderfully enriching curriculum designed to foster a love of learning.

English, maths and science are at its core and we provide focused support and challenge for children of all abilities to enable them to make the greatest possible academic progress in these areas. We fuel the children’s love of reading by sharing a wide range of engaging books and develop their imagination and creativity through story writing and drama activities. We encourage the children to ask questions and make independent discoveries in maths and science, developing competencies that will make them inquisitive life-long learners.

An Exciting and Enriching Curriculum

At Godinton, academic excellence does not come at the expense of a broad and balanced curriculum.

We pride ourselves on offering our children a wide range of exciting experiences both inside and outside the classroom, which provide them with many different avenues by which to succeed. Music, art and sport activities are securely placed in our curriculum in order to give all our children the opportunity to explore where their talents might lie outside of traditional academic subjects. We value the contribution that these subjects make to a child’s development and self-esteem and regularly take opportunities to celebrate the children’s successes in whatever area they lie.

A beautiful Outdoor Environment

Tucked safely away on the Godinton Park Estate, its only when you step within the school gate that you can fully appreciate the school’s privileged outside space.

Our school grounds are both extensive and beautiful, stretching around the entire building and providing a wonderful natural backdrop. Children at Godinton benefit from vast playing fields, adventure play areas, two playgrounds and a thriving wildlife garden and environmental area. A broad area of woodland, also within the grounds, provides an inspiring space for curriculum enrichment, as a stimulus for poetry or creative writing or as the location for scientific nature trails.

Our Reception children enjoy a safe outside area, which is used daily as part of their curriculum. The ‘mud kitchen’ and ‘talent stage’ for example, give the children excellent opportunities to develop their capacity for self-expression. The children are able to grow vegetables and flowers in the growing areas and can develop physical skills on the outdoor play equipment.

Classrooms throughout the school are bright and cheery and celebrate the children’s achievements. The school is fully equipped with interactive whiteboards and has a dedicated computing suite.  We ensure that we keep up to date with technology, providing our children with excellent opportunities to develop computing skills across the curriculum.

Nurturing Talents

At Godinton, we believe that practical, hands-on experiences help to secure learning and understanding. We give our children opportunities to lead assemblies or take part in school drama productions, to take part in sports matches and competitions or to perform in large scale events such as ‘Young Voices’ at the O2. These experiences help to develop confidence, which we see as having a positive impact on all areas of the children’s learning.

A wide range of after school clubs are on offer at the school and provide our children with valuable opportunities to enhance their areas of interest whilst having fun. Our children have the opportunity to try out activities such as cheerleading or athletics, photography or digital animation. Every term is different and there is always something taking place that generates much enjoyment.

Beyond the School Grounds

We value the importance of giving children experiences beyond the school grounds and throughout the year, each year group benefits from offsite activities. Curriculum visits to museums, wildlife parks, or places of historical or geographical interest help foster the children’s curiosity about the world around them and are often the things that they remember most about their time at school. 

Residential trips are also offered to our older children and include practical activities such as abseiling, kayaking and zip wires. Even the teachers have a go!

Children at Godinton are kind and thoughtful, caring and well mannered; we are immensely proud of them all.

We believe that we have our part to play in developing children who will grow into equally well-rounded adults and place strong emphasis on supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of our pupils. We provide a safe, secure and happy environment where children have a good sense of right and wrong and where everyone respects and supports each other.

We encourage all our children to be responsible members of our school community. Our older children act as role models around school through becoming Prefects, House Captains or Playground Buddies, helping to look after our younger children.

We do our utmost to make it easy for children to approach staff with any problems and we teach that bullying is never acceptable behaviour.

Our children’s achievements are celebrated each week during special celebration assemblies, gold cards, house points and afternoon tea with the Headteacher for those pupils who have made a positive contribution to the school.

A Happy School Community

Godinton Primary School is a community where everyone has a part to play. We very much welcome parental involvement in the school and have an active PTFA who run a host of fun family activities throughout the year to raise funds for the school.

An effective Governing Body provides excellent support for the school and our children benefit immensely from a dedicated staff of teachers, teaching assistants, office and premises staff who all make a valuable contribution to the Godinton team.

We hope that you and your child will want to be part of our Godinton family and we look forward to working in partnership with you.

Miss Jill Talbot (Headteacher)